D&D General The Double-Edged Sword: Is The New D&D Edition a Cash Grab in Disguise?

[Thomas Shey]

Oh, good gods, "New Edition of a Game is Only There to Take Advantage of the Fandom". How many times have I seen that one over the decades?

 

[DarkCrisis]

By providing content that people like so much that they will actually buy them. Shame on you WotC.

Yes im sure WotC is benevolent at heart and isn’t concerned about profit at all.

 

[LordEntrails]

Yeah, stopped reading after 20 posts. Let me reply to what I got to and leave it at that.

But at whose expense? Are they exploiting the community?

No, they are not. But you certainly are trying to exploit this community. Please stop it.

Did you ask them to rewrite the game? Who was it? You vaguely hand wave and use a generalization. Why not just make some more great content, like Ravenloft, instead of fracturing the community?

How about you start making some decent content and stop trying to exploit us with this garbage you have linked?

 

[Autumnal]

Oh, good gods, "New Edition of a Game is Only There to Take Advantage of the Fandom". How many times have I seen that one over the decades?

So you would say this is a new edition of a very familiar old thing?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

You mean trying to sell us stuff? Yes, they are. Is it exploiting to rerelease rules with new art? No.

Yeah…

If it seems like value added, I will buy it. If not I won’t. In this regard I don’t feel exploitable.

 

[mellored]

A cash grab? It will never stop surprising me how people are astounded that company's do things for money.

Agreed.

"Cash Grab" is when you try to make as much as possible without worrying about the future. Selling a crappy product that breaks in a few weeks, and are fine if the brand suffers for it.

You don't do a year long playtest as a "cash grab". You do that when you want to grow the brand and are investing in the long term.

 

[CleverNickName]

Yes im sure WotC is benevolent at heart and isn’t concerned about profit at all.

Yes, they're a business and not a non-profit. This isn't terribly shocking news either.

 

[teitan]

It's been a decade... that's not a cash grab especially when the 5e books still dominate sales charts. They don't NEED to grab cash. It's an opportunity to revise what "didn't work" and release new books to coincide with the anniversary of D&D. 3.5 and 4e were cash grabs, Essentials was an attempt at a course correction. 5e was a hard look at themselves and since it has been TEN YEARS since 5e launched its about as far from a cash grab as you can get because they could very well be shooting themselves in the foot and they know it, that is why so little is changing in comparison to previous "new editions". 2e was incredibly compatible with 1e but was far more different then revised 5e

 

[MGibster]

A cash grab? It will never stop surprising me how people are astounded that company's do things for money.

I think everyone understands that a company releases a product in order to make a profit, so you don't often hear people complaining about this. At least I don't recall a whole lot of people pointing to the release of the 5th edition Player's Handbook or Curse of Strahd as cash grabs. When somebody refers to something as a cash grab, they're aruging the company is releasing an inferior product in order to make a quick buck.

 

[Parmandur]

Is 2024 a new edition or a revision? To be honest, I haven't followed its development closely enough to have a strong opinion, but my sense is--based upon what I've read--is that it is much closer to a revision than an edition

The TL;DR is thst they are pretty robustly shifting around optional components (like Classes, Spells or Monsters), albeit fairly conservatively, but the core rules are staying pretty much the same. So lots of reports of people running mixed parties with PCs using 2014 amd 2024 rules without issue, because the engine is the same.

More radical changes to book layout than rules, apparently they used UX consultants to help rearrange where things are located within the books.